Skepticism

EVENTS

Excellent work, Denmark!

We all already knew that economic opportunity and a good government-provided social safety net was a good force for diminishing the influence of religion — but who knew it would also reduce sexual inequities? The Danes are notoriously irreligious, but now they also have a reputation with pick-up artists.

Roosh is this awful excuse for a human being (you’ve probably heard of him if you read Manboobz) whose game is “Game” and “pick up artistry”, and he’s very rapey. He travels around the world writing a series of books with titles of the form Bang <country name>, all about having one night stands with the women there…and of course they’re all thoroughly sexist and racist.

Until he visited Denmark. The book he wrote about that is titled Don’t Bang Denmark.

Fans of the travel writer will be disappointed that “pussy literally goes into hibernation” in this “mostly pacifist nanny state,” where the social programs rank among the best in the world. Roosh’s initial admiration for those resources is almost charming, if you’re able to momentarily forget that this is a man who considers devirginizing teenagers a sport.

“A Danish person has no idea what it feels like to not have medical care or free access to university education,” an awed Roosh reports. “They have no fear of becoming homeless or permanently jobless. The government’s soothing hand will catch everyone as they fall. To an American like myself, brainwashed to believe that you need to earn things like basic health care or education by working your ass off, it was quite a shock.”

Shock turns into disbelief and then rage when Roosh is rejected by heaps of “the most unfeminine and androgynous robotic women” he’s ever met. “Not a feminine drop of blood courses through their veins,” Roosh rants. He concludes that the typical fetching Nordic lady doesn’t need a man “because the government will take care of her and her cats, whether she is successful at dating or not.”

Note that unfeminine and androgynous equates to “doesn’t need a man”. Danish culture seems to undermine all of the assumptions Roosh has about how women should respond.

In Don’t Bang Denmark, PUAs’ Darwinian assumptions about women’s desires run up against Roosh’s Nordic bête noire: Jante Law. The term is derived from Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose’s 1933 novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, in which a small, fictitious working-class town champions solidarity over personal achievement. It describes a set of social norms such as self-deprecation that discourage individual preening.

The Danish egalitarian system and Jante Law feed on each other to form what is one of the most liberal, feminist-friendly societies in the world, Roosh writes.

Therefore, when it comes to getting laid, your American attitude and belief system will cockblock the fuck out of you before you even open your mouth. Since basically the entire point of game is showing you’re better than the next guy, something that Jante Law specifically forbids, it’s no surprise to find that game efforts will not be well received in Denmark, especially if you consider yourself an alpha male. It was amusing how often and how quickly I’d offend every Danish girl without even trying.

Jante Law is technically fictional, but like many stereotypes, it contains a degree of truth: Danish women don’t reward the alpha male “with more sex for his alphaness because alphaness breaks Jante Law.” In Denmark, the fail-proof pick-up artist cheat code does not compute, causing Roosh to get increasingly whiny—and disturbing—as Don’t Bang Denmark begins to flail in earnest.

Danish women “won’t defer to your masculinity,” he writes. “They can fuck you, but no more. What they do have are pussies and opinions you don’t really care about hearing. That’s it.” Advocates of Nordic social democracy should be thrilled to discover a perk of gender-equalizing work-family reconciliation policies: they combat skeeviness.

So what you’re saying, PZ, is that there’s a liberal, socialist country full of intelligent people who have no time for preening assholes? A land where rapishness is looked down upon and kindness flourishes? Where the men are feminists and the women are opinionated? And you don’t even have to obey the commands of a sky-daddy to get there?

I think we atheists need to admit that we were wrong: there is a heaven.

This may be just anecdotal, but I’ve heard from several friends who had problematic responses from Danish people in general – they complained that being a foreigner itself just isn’t “trustworthy” (let alone “sexy”), and that it took a long time to get any kind of social connection from Danes. But then that might be because we’re the “wrong” kind of foreigner here (THAT effect is universal – I’m also the “right” kind of immigrant in my country – CZ). A good social safety-net is wonderful, as well as such attitudes towards “alpha males” (read creeps). But I wouldn’t completely let them off the hook! Danes, what do you think?

But in all honesty, “alphamales” are still rewarded here – Just not on the scale that Roosh probably expected.

And we might come off as being xenophobic, but we’re very fond of our little piece of land here on Earth, and will protect what it stands for. That typically results in people being with cautious of strangers, but, in most cases, it’s not an absolute refusal.

And yet somehow I suspect that Danish men don’t have any marked problems getting to enjoy the company of Danish women. Funny how adaptable people are when they’re not mentally stuck in the mindset of “The world works one way–MY way.”

Anyone who “considers himself” an alpha male is not clear on the concept.

Isn’t the alpha-male concept about social species with single dominant male “leaders”, who have multiple females in their “family”, while beta-males would be less strong/dominant/younger males still within the social unit with young and up-coming males being either chased off or killed?

I’m not really sure how you can have an alpha-male who runs around the world attempting to impregnate as many young females as possible.. that’s something non-social species do, isn’t it? I’m thinking of polar bears, but then Mr. Roosh doesn’t really deserve that comparison. If he really wants to be an alpha-male he should become a Mormon polygamist so he can corral as many females as possible and to make sure they don’t have children with other “beta” males and respect his “authority”.

Last year I met several very nice Danes and had the opportunity to speak with them at length as we were in the same tour group. There is one guy (count ‘em: one) who lives up to the American right-wing’s nightmare horror story of the lazy people who will not work if they don’t have to. The Danes call him “Lazy Robert” and he’s become a kind of cause celeb in Denmark. He’s been unemployed for over 8 years and turns his nose up at every offer as “not suitable for him.” Many Danes are furious over this.

Here’s the point, though: it’s only one guy in a population of over 5 million. No one is talking about “welfare reform” or eliminating these government programs. There’s no faction trying to (or succeeding to) shut down the government over public spending. The Danish population has the same outrage and disgust as most of the rest of the world over Lazy Robert’s behavior but the Danes can see him as an outlier result and not a sufficient reason to eliminate any of these government benefits.

I dunno, I suspect Danes may have good asshole detection systems and thus can recognize douchecanoes like Roosh and maintain a safe distance. When I was in Copenhagen back in ’79 I found the Danes a bit aloof at first but once they established we weren’t assholes became quite friendly. It’s one place I would really like to visit again, provided I could learn Danish.

I’ve heard from several friends who had problematic responses from Danish people in general – they complained that being a foreigner itself just isn’t “trustworthy”

This is obviously completely anecdotal but I once went on a road-trip to Sweden. Camping is allowed anywhere in Sweden, as long as you’re not on private property and you leave the place clean.
We passed the bridge between Denmark and Sweden at night and struggled to find a place to plant our tent… We found one and in the morning were greeted by the Danish owners… it was private property.
It was an old man with his daughter and they were both very kind (I apologized about being on their land).
They even asked us how long we were going to stay. To which I replied “A couple of weeks” and they seemed fine with it. When they started giving us advices about the place, I corrected their apprehension that we were going to stay on their land: we were going to stay a couple of weeks total, elsewhere in Sweden and leave the premises in the next hour.

All of our other encounters went very fine also. But then again, we weren’t there to try to fuck everything that moved.

I always thought that “alpha male” schtick was based on wolf packs, checked wikipedia and found it just refers in general to dominant male in a social animal hierarchy. However, the “alpha” wolf, it says, turns out to be mostly myth and it wouldn’t surprise me if to a certain extent the whole “alpha” story isn’t in great part male ethologists seeing what they believe rather than believing what they see.

=8)-DX @11
That’s a darn good point–by any reasonable rubric, the PUA is actually an omega male. Usually no troop, definitely no harem… Roosh et al. are basically the equivalent of an orang who doesn’t have the chops to settle down and grow some cheek pouches. I like that.

And here’s the other thing about wolf pack social dynamics: the “alpha” (which, of course, doesn’t really exist in the sense that PUAs think they do) doesn’t need to run around preening and crap. Because the alpha’s status is immediately recognized by all the other wolves and doesn’t require stupid stunts to reinforce it.

Yup, I have no doubt that’s about right. Distrust and some degree of racism towards people from the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa is fairly prevalent. It’s generally not on the level of hate crimes against these groups for looking like “terrorists”. But it’s still a wide and ugly undercurrent in general, and a not so hidden racism among the Danish Peoples’ Party, which really should be renamed to “The immigrants cause all the problems Party”. According to the latest opinion polls, this party would get just shy of 20 % in national elections. There’s definitely something rotten in the state of Denmark, at the moment.

On a somewhat different, but related, note, there are some pretty strict and difficult unspoken rules about when and how you can start an informal conversation here. Simplistically put, it is almost never done. You can ask anyone for help, but that never leads to conversation. You have to have some reason, a shared acquaintance or being new in a job or class or something like that, to try to get to know someone. These rules are a lot more complex than that, though, and very difficult to parse. It usually takes a long time for immigrants to learn them, if they do at all. Sadly, sometimes the result is that people give up completely on learning the Danish social codes. More worryingly, the rules likely hinder integration. We do have some ghetto-like neighbourhoods, that have little or no contact with ethnically Danish communities (apart from the children who mostly attend public schools).

I’ll admit to having felt extremely uncomfortable by being approached by immigrants in ways and situations that just didn’t match up with what I’m habituated to. And I feel bad about that.

Also, in regards to the OP, I was pretty thrilled when that shit bag, RooshV, published his “review” of Denmark. The only way to take it is as a compliment.

@Esteleth 19
Not to mention that, you know… we’re not canines. We’re apes. We don’t form “packs.” We have troops–and while we do have regular struggles for dominance, we instinctively recognize that rapists are the lowest of the low and should be beaten with our long, hairy arms while we shout “Ook!” Insert further Discworld references until they are no longer funny.

Actually, while your general description of Denmark is true (by coincidence just today I was reading an article where they came in at #1 in life-work balance), for many, many recent years it was a conservative party who were the main party in the government. (Their name translates to “left” but that is a holdover from a hundred or more years ago when it meant “capitalist” as opposed to “monarchist”; these days, one would probably call them libertarian.) That’s right—a conservative party in Denmark is way to the left of Jerry Brown. Denmark has the highest taxes in the world but probably also the highest approval rating for its tax system.

However, all is not ideal. Compared to German- and Dutch speaking countries, all of Scandinavia and Finland are very prudish in many respects.

Oh I have the best mental image right now. Some oleaginous, self aggrandising, PUA waste of skin oiling his way up to a Danish woman only to be hit with the Danish for “Fuck off you utterly pointless fuckweasel” after trying his “A-material” on the tall, emotionally healthy, leggy blonde lady.*

Louis

*Yes I know it’s a stereotype, and an erroneous one, but it’s the contrast that’s amusing me. I am picturing her towering over him in full Nordic manner and exuding contempt.

On a somewhat different, but related, note, there are some pretty strict and difficult unspoken rules about when and how you can start an informal conversation here. Simplistically put, it is almost never done. You can ask anyone for help, but that never leads to conversation. You have to have some reason, a shared acquaintance or being new in a job or class or something like that, to try to get to know someone.

Heh, that is in complete juxaposition to Czech “pub culture”. Here the logic goes: if you’re sitting in the pub, you’re probably drinking beer. If you’re alone you’re antisocial, because: why would a beer-drinking person not find another beer-drinking person to talk to? Although privacy is generally taken seriously, listening in on conversations on public topics and occasionally inserting your own retort is seen as a natural way to interact.

When a Czech person meets a stranger and wants to interact, the catchphrase is “want to go get a beer” or “when are we going for a beer?” So I can see how my compatriots would have a problem in Denmark.

That being said lately I’ve been noticing the misogyny of local pub culture as well, we definitely have our share of creepy “alpha-males”!

*Czech pub culture is also the reason I mostly avoid Czechs when abroad: I’ll be stuck in the absurd situation of exchanging pleasantries with a total stranger and finding it impossible to reject the offer of a mutually quaffed beer – when I want to go down to the beach and indulge in cheap Italian wine!

Informal casual conversation isn’t done?!? Isn’t that lonely? I’m in Austin, Texas, and we strike up conversations anywhere and everywhere with anyone within shouting distance. I only slightly exaggerate. And as a stay at home mom, all those random interactions help keep me connected to the adult world. Grocery checkout line, parks, bus stops, etc etc etc.

I will say, it appears to be partially a Texas (maybe southern) thing because when I lived in DC, there was much fewer “good mornings” as I passed someone while running, and just much less eye contact in general.

And the Czech Republic isn’t Denmark, obviously, but my husband travels to CZ for work a couple times a year and is continually stunned by the casual racism he encounters from co-workers. Of course, the outright racism in the comments section of even liberal Austin’s newspaper is stomach-churning…

Conversations pretty much only happen amongst people who are at least acquaintances, or have reason to think one another might want to get to know the other. There are rare exceptions, of course. Short humorous or friendly exchanges do occur. I’d say almost exclusively happens if something strange happens in the situation, which can be commented on. It’s impossible to explain more clearly than that when this is allowed. I won’t even claim to know these rules. And very rarely those exchanges can become conversations. I think far more often than not, people who try these exchanges are considered weird. In some parts of the country passing strangers are allowed to greet each other, though…

Mostly we keep to ourselves and our friends in public spaces. On the bus, for instance, no one wants anyone to talk to them, unless it’s asking for the time or something small like that. In fact, you’re not even allowed to look people in the eyes. Smiling is weird. Much the same with the grocery store line. I wish I could say that this is an exaggeration but it kind of isn’t.

I much prefer being able to fake a smile and a passing “good day” to my neighbours, and be done with it.

I remember the joke I heard while living in Finland, it went something like “If someone tries to speak to you on the bus they are drunk, Swedish, or drunk and Swedish”. (I’ve heard it substituted with american as well.)

Therefore, when it comes to getting laid, your American attitude and belief system will cockblock the fuck out of you before you even open your mouth. Since basically the entire point of game is showing you’re better than the next guy, something that Jante Law specifically forbids, it’s no surprise to find that game efforts will not be well received in Denmark, especially if you consider yourself an alpha male. It was amusing how often and how quickly I’d offend every Danish girl without even trying.

And once again we see that declaring oneself an ‘alpha male’ is perhaps the single surest indication of rampant arsehattery.

Danish women “won’t defer to your masculinity,” he writes.

It speaks volumes that Roosh expects women to ‘defer to his masculinity’, as if the happenstance of his birth sex somehow grants him some unassailable authority. I wonder what it is that leads him to believe that the odd looking tubular organ in question grants one some special status?

Does anyone else find it hilarious (and not remotely surprising) that the techniques PUAs claim are based on evolutionary psychology by their own admission stop working completely with only minor societal differences?

So does that mean they admit the evolutionary basis is BS, or are Danes supposedly a different species?

#28 and #30,
It must be an Austin thing. I’m a little further south in San Antonio and our neighborhood is full of people who are downright unfriendly. A neighbor who was walking past started beating on my service dog with a walking stick just because he tried to make friends with the guy’s dog. That would never have happened in California.
We lived here for 17 years and only knew the names of 2 or 3 neighbors. We lived in Ca for 3 1/2 years and made LOTS of friends, both in our neighborhood and in the community. We’ve moved back, and we still know only 2 or 3 neighbors – most just keep to themselves.
I find that the people here are doing that “southern hospitality” thing for the tourists to make money off of them, and then criticize them behind their backs.

It’s rather ironic actually, seeing as when we (danes) are out on the town and getting drunk we’re really social and easily approachable. So his failure to be the so called “alpha, getting laid here and there, male ” is even more amusing.

Here the logic goes: if you’re sitting in the pub, you’re probably drinking beer. If you’re alone you’re antisocial, because: why would a beer-drinking person not find another beer-drinking person to talk to?

I spent a lot of years traveling all over for work, and found this very much to be the case in CZ, with one exception. On my last night of a 10 stay in CZ, I had had such good luck with finding awesome people to drink with in the evenings that I thought I’d break my world-wide rule of never going up and talking with a group of people if there are no women in that group (side note: I am a woman), as there were no groups with women in them at the bar I was at, only a few couples, and it was my last night, and I didn’t want to drink alone. The two beer-drinking dudes I sat down with were pleasant enough until one of them accused me of being a prostitute. Now, granted he wasn’t trying to solicit my “services”, just accusing me of trying to hustle them. So that was fun. And a first. No more rule-breaking for me.

I remember the joke I heard while living in Finland, it went something like “If someone tries to speak to you on the bus they are drunk, Swedish, or drunk and Swedish”.

There are also those who have lived in the same neighbourhood for four years, but only remember you from five years ago, and can’t stop talking because they’re off their asses on amphetamines, and they’re quite happy to let everyone in the bus know how we maybe smoked pot together with one of my flatmates back then.

FTR, denmark has actually been dismantling its Nice Things, and is pretty damn xenophobic. There’s a reason the Waifu is going to move to Sweden – i can actually move in with her and get residency that way.

if the point of “the game” is just to show you are better than the other guy that leads me to some other thoughts
the “player” is insecure
the player is not really interested in women at all
the player is more interested in other men and their opinion of them
women are not really people in the same way
the players life is isolating and rather impersonal

Another Dane here. And I’ll second that Denmark has its issues. And like with Sweden, behind the official equality is a lot of old-fashioned misogyny. And we’re steering to the right, like almost all of the western world. But I mainly see three major issues (especially) for foreigners that could cause them to have problems socialising with Danes:

1: Danes are more introverted and concerned with their personal space than most other people. Many of them find it difficult to strike up conversations with strangers and awkward/unpleasant to have strangers strike up conversations with them. I like it because it decreases street harassment and makes guys more likely to leave you alone, but it makes Danes comes across as cold and distant to most people outside the other Nordic countries (who instead often find Danes warm, exuberant, but also rude).

Danes are often pretty ethical and willing to make sacrifices for other people’s well being (not only in the form of the welfare system, but also by usually donating more money per capita to disasters in other parts of the world than people countries like the USA do), but they’re really bad at everyday spontaneous exhibitions of kindness towards strangers in person. I’ve heard that once you get close, many people find Danes to be friendly and kind (as do I for the most part), but the Danish combination of introversion and independence makes this hard to achieve.

2: Contrary to American propaganda about collectivism, Danes can be very individualistic (I’ve heard Danes refer to Americans as being the less individualistic ones, because of their authoritarian attitudes), just not in the way it’s usually understood in the USA. People call authority figures like teachers by their first name, are often less automatically respectful towards these authority figures, and value informality and joking. Social gatherings among Danes are often very irreverent, especially among younger people, because there aren’t many customs designed to establish respect (whether mutual or to an authority) between people left. The tone can be blunt, confrontational, and heavily laced with sarcasm and in-jokes. The things people are expected to be open about and put up with can be seen as unusual and hostile for some foreigners.

And ironically, because of the greater social security and egalitarianism, Danes are quite vulnerable to libertarian attitudes. It’s not even surprising, given that most libertarians are in positions where they don’t experience much hardship and have enough power that they aren’t forced to take other people’s perspective into account. It’s deeply hypocritical, but many Danes exhibit a stunted attitude of “I’ve got mine (and I don’t need you) so screw you”. This means that they’ll often expect foreigners to immediately act and talk to them in a way they’re comfortable with, but wont try to make accommodations for the foreigner.

3: Denmark has a strong tradition for tolerance when it comes to speech, which can blunt a lot of people’s sensitivity when it comes to offence. It also makes certain (more or less international) trends, like the attitude that freedom of speech means freedom to not be opposed, and of people no longer distinguishing between punching up and down, very prevalent. And even when that isn’t the case, the humour is still very sarrcastic and vulgar. You’d never get a significant part of the Danish population to agree with the position that rape is never funny, as we’ve yet to agree about that issue in regards to racism, paedophilia, genocide, and concentration camps.

A lot of the humour comes from being intentionally shocking and/or satirising the bigots who express the offensive attitude, and you’re not supposed to agree with the hate expressed, but the line between laughing at the horror to rob it of power and laughing at the horror because you don’t find it horrible is very fine, and lots of people take advantage of it to express certain opinions unopposed under the guise of humour. And even when this is not the case, foreigners probably can’t tell the difference. And because many Danes sympathise with (and see themselves as) rebels and underdogs, offence is considered its own value (until it hit a sore spot with certain Danes because hypocrisy).

Does anyone else find it hilarious (and not remotely surprising) that the techniques PUAs claim are based on evolutionary psychology by their own admission stop working completely with only minor societal differences?

So does that mean they admit the evolutionary basis is BS, or are Danes supposedly a different species?

A very good question.
:) :) :)

I suspect that PUAs will simply ignore the implications, since they do not validate their hypothesis.
-

Another Dane here. For those openly contemplating coming here, some further encouragement:

Growing up here, I was 26 years old before I discovered there are actually people alive today, who believe the story of Noah’s Ark. If you’d asked me before then I would have said maybe A FEW did 600 years ago, but today only a handful worldwide and only in psychiatric wards.

“A lot of the humour comes from being intentionally shocking and/or satirising the bigots who express the offensive attitude, and you’re not supposed to agree with the hate expressed, but the line between laughing at the horror to rob it of power and laughing at the horror because you don’t find it horrible is very fine, and lots of people take advantage of it to express certain opinions unopposed under the guise of humour. And even when this is not the case, foreigners probably can’t tell the difference.”

Unless she’s applying for a position at Jezebel, no respectable company will touch a toxic individual who has been linked to racism. They don’t want anyone who may cause controversy for them, and behind rape, nothing says controversy like race. …

It’s a slow-burn attack that will effectively punish these writers and scare their co-workers , whose income is low enough that they need to depend on corporate employment indefinitely, unless one day they get an original thought and can stay away from their iPhone long enough to write a book. It won’t work on the big liberal writers like Jessica Valenti or Naomi Wolf, since any attention they get just helps them sell more books, but it does work on the young girl out of college trying to win feminist brownie points by denouncing a man for being “creepy” based on a bad joke. [my emphasis]

People are made vulnerable and insecure by unequal and authoritarian systems, and have fewer resources to rebel against those oppressing, exploiting, and harassing them. Additionally, such policies and systems create cultures of authoritarianism and hierarchical thinking. All of the policies pushed by the Republicans have this dimension: they want people who are poor, unemployed, women, workers, children, immigrants, minorities,… to be compelled to submit to the more powerful: people to corporations, women to men, workers to bosses, and so on, on a daily basis. They want those who do rebel to be stigmatized and punished. They want people to have to submit to authority, and for everyone to believe that this is natural. They’ll fight any policy changes – like greater access to health care – that might make people less desperate and more ready to question, reject, or rebel.

This guy’s comments about women in Denmark and workers in the US betray a fragile self image. When he says that women in favelas in Brazil are “easy,” he’s concealing, possibly from himself, the suspicion that he has nothing as a human being to offer a woman, and that he’s in fact entirely dependent on national and global structural inequalities and the oppression that sustains them. For all of his talk about the “jungle,” he vaguely knows he needs this system,** and that a better one would mean an end to existing “obligations of deference and command,” as Corey Robin puts it. I imagine that’s terrifying. (Incidentally, Simone de Beauvoir also discusses this phenomenon in her description of the Adventurer as a person who’s falsely free, in The Ethics of Ambiguity.)

*Which, as crowssong points out above, blows apart their EP nonsense.

**This isn’t to suggest that the system in which he operates actually provides for his real human needs. It doesn’t.

Regarding Austin and friendliness: I grew up in Houston, but my parents are New Yorkers. When I started living in the University of Houston dorms, I would get freaked out, because people I’d never met before would say “hi, how are you doing?” if we passed in the stairwell. I hadn’t realized just how much of the New York culture I’d absorbed. In Austin, I think you get what you give. If I’m feeling chatty and friendly, I can be chatty with, say, cashiers, and it’s perfectly normal (I can usually tell who’ll be responsive, and I don’t do it with people who don’t seem interested.) But I don’t feel like a pariah if I don’t engage, and I don’t feel bombarded with unwelcome attention. I don’t generally have people strike up random conversations at bus stops or in checkout lines or whatever (though it does happen.) I feel like I’m relatively stand-offish for Austin, but boy did I feel friendly when I visited NYC and Boston.

I could handle the Danish way, I think, but I enjoy having some flexibility.

Not to mention that, you know… we’re not canines. We’re apes. We don’t form “packs.” We have troops–and while we do have regular struggles for dominance, we instinctively recognize that rapists are the lowest of the low and should be beaten with our long, hairy arms while we shout “Ook!” Insert further Discworld references until they are no longer funny.

Does anyone else find it hilarious (and not remotely surprising) that the techniques PUAs claim are based on evolutionary psychology by their own admission stop working completely with only minor societal differences?

So does that mean they admit the evolutionary basis is BS, or are Danes supposedly a different species?

As PZ has observed its proponents already have a convenient cop-out. You see, these aren’t Real women ™ we’re talking about – they’re “unfeminine”, “androgynous”, “robotic”. In their minds it’s not a contradiction of the EP hypothesis, but rather confirmation that women in this weird culture suppress their natural behavior. As was the case with all women who pointed out that they stood in contrast to EP’s edicts of female behavior they are considered unnatural outliers that swim against the current.

That is so fascinating! Do you know if Slovakian culture is the same way? My best friend is from Slovakia. She and her parents moved to Los Angeles when she was a kid, but her entire extended family is still in Slovakia, she still keeps an apartment there and goes back for long, extended visits, speaks the language almost exclusively with her parents, etc.

Anyway, I’m in California, lived here my whole life. I love Emma, but even though we’re so close, her behavior can still sometimes make me feel uncomfortable when we’re traveling together. She starts up conversations with random people on public transportation, will just start talking to people (like you said, interjecting into conversations taking place nearby) when we’re at a coffee shop or whatever. And I am so not that way…not that I’m unfriendly, or wouldn’t want to help someone who needed directions or the time or whatever, but I’m also not going to talk with people I don’t know! And I have a hard time getting over the belief that it’s downright rude to talk to the people around you when you’re on a bus or airplane (even when I was typing this out, I initially wrote “bother the people around you” rather than the more neutral “talk to the people…”)

::shrug:: Maybe it’s just who she is and has nothing to do with her background, but I thought it was interesting what you were saying about Czech culture. And goodness knows she’s endeared herself to every elderly person within 20 miles of her apartment (or shared a bus with) but I still have to sometimes smooth feathers with mutual acquaintances my age (mid-to-late twenties) who think she’s rude.

I’ve found these sorts of differences fascinating since the Japanese language and culture class I took on a lark about ten years back. I was astonished when I realized how many everyday, normal-for-California, unconscious behaviors and mannerisms would be accidentally offensive (or just obnoxious) to the average Japanese person, and how many Japanese cultural norms would’ve accidentally offended (maybe even caused some serious hurt feelings with) me if I hadn’t known about them. Since then, I know I won’t ever travel farther than a couple states over before doing some research. ;)

You can almost see the spittle landing on his screen as he types “unfeminine” and “androgynous” and “robotic”. Clearly his alpha male ego is far too fragile to withstand contact with a woman who doesn’t buy his cheap college-boy pickup tricks.

I only wish I was a fly on the wall when this insulated, ignorant, preening little fuckwit was shot down in flames – the collision of MRA evo-psych alpha-hunter dogma with a strong female presence would’ve been awesome to behold. I can almost see the withering glare of a Viking woman reducing this puffed-up, collar-popping, two-fisted wanker to a petulant, whining 8 year-old denied a cookie.

“People are made vulnerable and insecure by unequal and authoritarian systems, and have fewer resources to rebel against those oppressing, exploiting, and harassing them. Additionally, such policies and systems create cultures of authoritarianism and hierarchical thinking. All of the policies pushed by the Republicans have this dimension: they want people who are poor, unemployed, women, workers, children, immigrants, minorities,… to be compelled to submit to the more powerful: people to corporations, women to men, workers to bosses, and so on, on a daily basis. They want those who do rebel to be stigmatized and punished. They want people to have to submit to authority, and for everyone to believe that this is natural. They’ll fight any policy changes – like greater access to health care – that might make people less desperate and more ready to question, reject, or rebel.”

What are the pictures of conventionally attractive naked white women supposed to contribute?

I guess it was supposed to *prove* that all Danish women aren’t asexual robots. But then after looking at some of Roosh’s articles, he has a completely warped sense of what is “sexy”. It’s only playing into the game of people like this.

Where I come from, which is behind the Czech Republic as seen from Denmark, you just don’t talk at strangers unless you really have to, and then you begin with “excuse me”. Even if it’s their job to give information to strangers. The default way for strangers to treat each other is as moving obstacles that are best left alone. In keeping with comment 33, the only people who break that rule are drunk, have extroverted mental illnesses, or both.

Even though, in the countryside, you’re supposed to greet everyone you see. ~:-| But just greet them, not stop them and begin a conversation. That would be bizarre and intrusive.

Grocery checkout line, parks, bus stops

Never, never, and never, respectively. :-)

And the Czech Republic isn’t Denmark, obviously, but my husband travels to CZ for work a couple times a year and is continually stunned by the casual racism he encounters from co-workers.

After WWII, the West made some amount of effort to educate children ouf of racist and nationalist prejudices. (With mixed results, it goes without saying.) The East, on the other hand, simply put a lid on it: all socialist peoples are friends, lalalalala, all national problems have been solved in the best possible way and don’t you dare doubt that. Well, the lid is gone, and war broke out very quickly in several places within just a few years.

I much prefer being able to fake a smile and a passing “good day” to my neighbours, and be done with it.

Over here you’re not even required to smile! :-)

In fact, you’re not even allowed to look people in the eyes.

What, while talking to them???

Smiling is weird.

Absolutely. I hate it when strangers smile at me for no apparent reason (which is very rare). It can only mean 2 things:
1) They know me, so I’m supposed to know them. Shit, I can’t remember! And I’m really not easy to confuse with anyone! Help!
2) They’re lying about 1). Why would random strangers lie about that? Doesn’t compute. And yet, they smile! What, are they falling in love with me or something similarly absurd?!?

is going to move to Sweden – i can actually move in with her and get residency that way

Yay! :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

What’s interesting about this case is that he, at some dim level, gets the connection between political and economic structures and the micro-relations of power.

Exactly!

If I’m feeling chatty

…If you’re feeling what? If you’re feeling like “hey, I’d like to chat with a random stranger today”? Does not compute.

For those on the left side of The Pond, apparently this douchenozzle has rated Toronto the worst city in North America to get laid in…because you actually have to treat women with some degree of respect and not be an asshole in order to get laid.